Cardboard cutouts pose as guests for wedding amid COVID-19

Dan Stuglik and Amy Simonson are photographed Tuesday, March 31, 2020 in Pokagon, Mich. The two will be joined by more than 100 cardboard cutouts of family and friends when they are married this Saturday at The Old Rugged Cross Church in Pokagon. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the couple to change their original plan of inviting 150 people to one where only a handful will be present, but with the help and donation of the cutouts by Menasha Packaging, the two will be able to fill the pews.(Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP)

DOWAGIAC, Mich. – Cardboard cutout wedding guests will make for a not-so-cookie-cutter wedding as a Michigan couple prepares to tie the knot during the coronavirus pandemic.

After Amy Simonson and Dan Stuglik’s wedding plans were disrupted amid the outbreak, a packaging company donated more than 100 cardboard cutouts to pose as stand-ins for the family and friends who couldn’t attend the wedding this Saturday because of Michigan’s stay-at-home order.

Menasha Packaging Co. in Coloma made cutouts to resemble guests tall and short, young and old, with long hair, short hair and ponytails.

"(Stuglik) was just looking for a general person shape, but I was able to make a little bit more realistic audience for them,” Ted Harris, customer service and design manager at Menasha, told The Herald-Palladium.

Stuglik, a Coloma Township police officer, said he’ll forever be thankful to Menasha for helping him do something special for his fiancée.

“I wanted to do something (creative) so she wouldn’t walk down the aisle to an empty church,” he said. “That was a painful part, that her wedding was being stripped away from her, but Menasha helped bring a little back.”

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